Health Plans Should Cover Birth Control

May 07, 1995|By Cox News Service.

ATLANTA — Private and public health insurance plans should cover birth control if the United States is to stem an alarming rise in unintended pregnancies, according to a new Institute of Medicine report.

The report urges politicians, businesses and the public to make cheaper and easier-to-get contraceptives part of a nationwide campaign similar to the successful efforts to reduce smoking and drunken driving.

More than 60 percent of pregnancies nationwide are either mistimed or unwanted, double the rate of any other industrialized country, according to "The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-Being of Children and Families."

After dropping steadily in the 1970s, births resulting from unintended pregnancies rose from 37 percent in 1982 to 44 percent in 1990, the authors of the report found. They conclude that unwelcome births contributed to divorce, welfare dependency and an ever-increasing number of children living in poverty.

Less than half of conventional insurance plans offer any kind of contraceptive coverage, according to the New York-based Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health issues. Only 15 percent of traditional insurance plans and 40 percent of managed-care programs cover the five most effective non-surgical techniques.